Monday, June 20, 2011

Many pundits have said that Barack Obama will be difficult to defeat in the 2012 presidential election. They say that on a personal level, people still like the president and that the republican field is weak. People may not agree with everything Obama has done but many are still willing to give him a pass based on situations he inherited from the previous president.

One group that may be somewhat reluctant to give Obama a pass is doctors. Obama has said that there are doctors who cut out healthy tonsils, even healthy limbs in order to earn extra money. He said this as if it was common practice and that such procedures are encouraged by the medical profession. Obama’s casting of all medical professionals with this slanderously broad brush may anger those doctors and nurses who truly care about helping and curing people.

Police officers may also not be too thrilled to support Obama in 2012. Police officers and police unions spoke out angrily when Obama said the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. He made this comment only moments after he said that he didn’t know all the facts of the case. His rush to judgment on the ‘stupidity’ of the police officer involved shows an inherent distrust of police, in general.

Another group that may be somewhat distrustful of Obama is the British. Obama made a point of packing up and sending back a bust of Winston Churchill. If he truly didn’t like the bust of Churchill, he could have simply put it in a closet. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that by sending it back, Obama actually WANTED to insult the British. He also has insulted the Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He has sided with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. He called France America’s strongest ally and has also challenged British influence in NATO.

But other than doctors, police and British people, everyone likes Obama -- Unless you are a member of the Supreme Court or are a person who believes in a constitutionally mandated balance of power between different branches of government. When Obama insulted a Supreme Court decision during a state of the union address, he insulted more than just the decision and the members of the court who made that decision -- he insulted the very idea of what the United States is as a Constitutional Republic. By calling on congress to overturn a Supreme Court decision he showed a lack of grace and civility that is certain to lose votes among people who believe in and cherish the constitution.

People in the United States generally think that America is an inherently good and moral country. When Obama went to Egypt and to countries in Europe and said that in the past, America has acted arrogantly, he insulted all the people who felt that America has done an incredible service to the world. Isn’t America insulted enough by Europe and by Muslim countries in the Middle East? Does the United States need to be insulted by its own president? How about the president bringing up all the American people that have died protecting people in other countries? How about his bringing up all the technology invented by Americans that have saved lives? How about his bringing up all the wealth American policy has created for the world and the generosity of Americans in freely giving that wealth to countries? Other countries, by the way, who continue to criticize the methods of that wealth creation which they are the beneficiaries of!

Obama has insulted the military and the CIA which, after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, has worked tirelessly and effectively to prevent another attack. President Obama said “Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained”. According to Marc Thiessen’s brilliant book “Courting Disaster”, an officer at one of the detention camps said “I’m not doing anything to create terrorists”. Another said “I take offense at that. The detainees here are better fed and live in better conditions than prisoners anywhere in the world. Some have had the opportunity to leave, and chose not to.” Other prisoners have been transferred to other detention camps and asked to be returned to Guantanamo. Officers at Guantanamo have done an incredibly difficult job. They’ve been harassed mercilessly by their captives and have shown incredible restraint and professionalism only to be insulted by their very own commander-in-chief.

During the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama skipped a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the Pentagon would not allow campaign staff or media to accompany him into the hospital. It would seem as if Obama only cares to show support for wounded veterans if he can gain political mileage out of it. This is a truly amazing display of arrogance and lack of respect to the US military and all wounded veterans.

President Obama has also insulted Christians. He refused to issue an Easter or Good Friday greeting to the nation as other presidents have done, but he is quick to recognize holidays of other religions. He has openly mocked the bible, in particular Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In addition, he has remained eerily silent as Christians are being persecuted TODAY in Iraq, Egypt and other North African countries.

Obama has insulted rural Americans creating a caricature of them as ignorant unthinking people “clinging to their guns and religion”.

Obama has insulted the surviving relatives of the 9-11 attacks and all New Yorkers by having his justice department propose bringing the trials of accused terrorists to New York. Though popular demand ended that ridiculous idea, there is still the travesty of a mosque purposely being proposed in the sacred ground of the World Trade Center.

Obama has insulted Poland on more than one occasion. He pulled out of the agreement over Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, forcing the Poles to rethink their deployment in Afghanistan. At first he wasn’t going to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. He later changed his mind on this but couldn’t get there due to the grounding of planes due to volcanic activity. In addition, rather than Obama paying his respects to the Polish fallen by visiting the recently erected Victims of Communism memorial in Washington, or at the very least, signing the condolence book at the Polish Embassy, he chose to play a round of golf.

Obama has also insulted Jewish Americans and other Americans who support the state of Israel. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel, a country that wants to live in peace, and only acts in its own defense, with groups of terrorists such as Hamas which are bent on its destruction and the killing of innocents. He has insulted the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on more than one occasion. He has made the ridiculous request that Israel retreat to the indefensible borders of 1967. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel’s building of settlements (houses!) for people to live in with people walking around with suicide belts. He has tried to push Israel to suicidal peace agreements with Syria. He has made the accusation, directly and indirectly, that Israel is the cause of instability in the Middle East. He has referred to Israel as occupied territory when, in fact, much of that land is disputed territory which Israel has more of a legitimate and historic claim to than anyone. It’s difficult to say who he has insulted more, Israel or Britain!

OK, so Obama has insulted doctors, police, the British, the Supreme Court, Constitutionalists, people who are proud -- not ashamed of America, the CIA, the military, wounded veterans, Christians, rural Americans, family members of 9-11 victims, Polish Americans and Jews. The cliché goes that ‘you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet. Obama should be judged by the job he’s done as president and not by the many groups he has offended.

Rather than end wars, he has added a new one. Rather than reduce the debt, he has raised it to a level that is so unsustainable it threatens the very future of the country. Unemployment has skyrocketed from 6 percent, when he took over, to 9 percent. The housing market is in shambles. Terrorism remains as big a threat as it’s ever been. The Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the Middle East while moderates such as Mubarak are gone and Iran is getting ready to go nuclear.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

What is gay marriage? A marriage consists of a wife (the woman) and a husband (the man). Can one person be a wife one day and a husband the next day? Is it decided at the time of this marriage that one person will be always be the husband and the other the wife? Or are the concepts of husband and wife to be thrown away like so many other outdated and useless old concepts?

Two people of the same sex committing their lives to each other constitutes a friendship, not a marriage. People often ask why it has to be that way. If two people love each other why shouldn’t they have the right to get married? The fact is, if two people of the same sex want to have a ceremony and dedicate their lives to each other, they can call it a marriage and no one will come and knock on their doors to stop them. The United States is a tolerant country and Americans are a tolerant people who accept the fact that people are different.

But people want same sex marriage to be recognized by the law and this means that other people have to accept the idea that a man can marry a man or a woman can marry a woman which to most people, on the face of it, is ridiculous. There is a difference with identifying your own relationship as a marriage and forcing other people to abide by that classification.

Liberals on the left and libertarians on the right may ask why the government should be in the marriage business anyway? Andrew Napolitano of Fox news said government should not try to stand in the way of a marriage between two people. So in his mind, as long as a marriage is between two people, it doesn’t matter if they are of the same sex.

If that is the case, why does the definition of marriage have to stop at two people? In fact, in this day and age, when a husband and wife often both have to work, why not have a husband and two wives? Instead of sending kids to get day care by strangers or hiring a nanny, the kids can have two legitimate mothers. One mother can work and the other can take care of the children.

Changing the definition of marriage can be rationalized in many different ways. At some point, if it is to have any meaning, it has to have a definition. Every relationship between individuals does not constitute a marriage.

Some people look at same sex marriage as a civil rights issue. This is incorrect as well. There are no separate rules for straight people vs. gay people. Every man has the right to marry every woman and every woman has the right to marry every man. It is not as if one group has one set of rules and another group has a different set of rules. If a man doesn’t want to marry a woman, he doesn’t have to do so. No one in society is forced to get married.

That marriage exists between a man and a woman is a self evident truth that most people, whether they want to admit it or not, know instinctively to be true. All the rationalizations and twisting of logic and the calling of people who feel that same sex marriage is a ludicrous idea ‘Homophobes’ does not change this reality.

At the heart of the movement to legalize same sex marriage is something far more insidious than the idea that two people of the same sex should be allowed to get married. Same sex marriage is an attack on the institutions, traditions and stability of the country.

Aldous Huxley, in his forward to a “Brave New World” wrote the following:“In a few years, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator … will do well to encourage that freedom … it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”

In the classic novel “Brave New World”, history and traditions are wiped out. Classic works of literature are eliminated. The only thing that matters is stimulation of the senses where promiscuity is encouraged and rewarded. Thus this conversation from the book:Lenina: “Somehow… I hadn’t been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately.”Fanny: “But one’s got to make the effort … After all, every one belongs to every one else.”

We are constantly hearing from the left about how we need to think less of ourselves and sacrifice more for others. They never talk about the successful traditions of the past. They don’t talk about religion or God. The left seems to have an inherent hatred for all religious and time tested traditions. Gay marriage is their perfect vehicle to diminish these traditions.

For a dictatorship to thrive, all the traditions that came before must be discredited. One of the most important traditions in any civilized society is the idea of the family. By blurring the most basic, common sense idea – that marriage is between a man and a woman, you are opening up the door to making everything subjective. Some things ARE black or white with no gray in between.

Barack Obama mentor and left wing agitator/community organizer Saul Alinsky understood this all too well when he said: "An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.”

At some point people have to make a stand for reality and truth. Some things are so obvious that there is no rational argument to be made. The left has made people question their own gut instincts. A country is more than a group of people living within defined boundaries. A country is defined by ideas and values. When a dictator wants control of a country he must attack it at its foundation. Make a country mean nothing, make it stand for nothing, and there is nothing left to fight to preserve – nothing to stand in the way of the would-be dictator because nothing is left worth defending.

When you walk into a corporate building in the month of June, you are likely to see a sign that says the following:“XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender month.”Is XYZ Company proud to celebrate this or is it afraid NOT to celebrate it? At the risk of attracting the wrath of all the compassionate people out there, if you’re going to celebrate Transgender month, how about a celebration for schizophrenia? Where is the month celebrating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? How about signs in the corporate lobby saying “XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Bipolar Manic-depressive month”?

We have become a society of people that enjoy the thrill of a 3-D movie but can’t name any Supreme Court justices. We are a society of people that know all the contestants on American Idol but can’t name the current Vice President (of course many people who DO know who the Vice President is often wish they were part of the group that didn’t). In short, this is a society made up of people who have become gullible to the stimulus around them provided by the left. They have been told to be tolerant and non-judgmental. By the way, every time people use their brains they are being judgmental so when people tell you to stop being judgmental they are basically telling you to stop thinking. We are getting closer and closer to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.

Is same sex marriage an important enough issue to debate and legislate? Is it even worth writing about while so many really dangerous things are happening? People were asked to tolerate differences, and most agreed that it was the right thing to do. But toleration is not celebration.

The United States is a country of individual rights and individual responsibilities. Though many have tried to pervert what the framers of the constitution meant, their main idea was that human rights come from our Creator, not from other people. In other words, the founding of this country had a religious and moral beginning and it is that idea that has been the backbone of the country’s success. That success will not continue if we abandon those principles.